In amongst the sacks of fan mail, hate mail and Kleeneze catalogues that regularly arrive at Zero Towers, there appeared this week a letter from my credit card company. It stood out from their usual correspondence, notable for how it wasn’t written in blood and for how it came through the letter box rather than through the window attached to a brick and a flaming bag of poo. Despite its unusually pleasant delivery method, however, it still contained its usually unpleasant tidings of dread, misery and woe. It announced it was ending its deal with Cancer Research UK and would no longer be offering charity credit cards. It came as close as any letter has ever come to twirling its moustache.

Those of you who regularly peruse the Butterflies section will know where I stand on charity credit cards. They are so close to useless that they’re barely worth bothering with but may as well be used because the alternative is non-charity credit cards which are even lousier than the lousiness of the lousiest charity credit card. Rest assured, though, we are talking serious lousieness here. Cancer Research UK, before the Bank of Scotland and Halifax (owned by Lloyds TSB) told it to eff off and die, received £20 for every new sign up and just 0.25% of every purchase made thereafter. As noted in this least buttery of flies, anyone using one as their sole means of charitable giving should be hit in the face with a hungry orphan’s metastasizing tumour.

It does add up though, tiny bit by mean tiny bit. In their letter the bank said they had given £14.5 million in the 23 years they had been partnered with Cancer Research UK, which is better than a kick in the old giblets. Which is what they’re giving now. Some guy at Lloyds, quoted by the BBC, said the card was “no longer proving to be a cost-effective method of donating to charity”, a quote paraphrasing what is presumably their actual thought that the card was no longer proving to be a cost-effective method of keeping all their money to themselves.

Relieved as I was to learn the letter was not attempting to screw me over but merely screwing over the terminally ill, I still felt I should do something in response to what can only be called a colossally miserly decision by a ruthless bunch of inhuman money-grabbing evildoers despatched from Satan’s second bumhole; known to be the dirtier of the two. By which I mean I had a look for alternatives. And before I begin listing companies and products, take note I endorse not a one of them. I choose not to use my power and celebrity to shill for anyone, unlike George Clooney who’s taken to endorsing Nestlé products and couldn’t be less dignified if he did his next advert with his trousers round his ankles, soiling a baggy pair of dirty grey Y-fronts.

The Cooperative Bank, on top of its basic ethical policy, offers cards in partnership with ActionAid, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Tearfund, Oxfam, RSPB, Save the Children, Shelter, WaterAid and the Woodland Trust. They receive between £15 and £20 on sign up and 0.25% of whatever you spend thereafter. MBNA give to the RSPCA, Dogs Trust, WWF and the National Trust, donating £4 on sign up, £2 for every year you hold the card and 0.25% on purchases. Virgin Money gives no sign up donation but 0.8% of purchases topped up to 1% with Gift Aid and donates to any charity registered with Virgin Money Giving. In summary then, nuts to the Bank of Scotland, Halifax and Lloyds TSB. I’ve got options.

None of which I can use because I’m broke, colossally in debt and my credit rating’s in the ground and burrowing deeper by the minute. But when I’m working again, vengeance will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine…

And so to January’s Charity of the Month. Owing to circumstances within my control I didn’t get around to picking charities for November or December last year, an oversight that meant two struggling countries lapsed from first to third world. To their people I apologise. Things are looking up for January, however, as the charity’s been picked, the donation’s been made and the whole thing’s not just done but also dusted.

I was in Amsterdam for new year (tamer than you think) and whiled away my time eating waffles and pancakes and cheese and lusting after the hot dogs my meat-eating companions devoured like shaved lions to a bun-based zebra snack. I did the odd bit of grown up stuff too, looking at buildings what were nice, looking at paintings that were painted good and generally getting cultured up to my tits. The highlight, in a colossally awful, depressing kind of way, was the visit to Anne Frank’s house at Prinsengracht. And so we begin the awkward segue from jokey intro to heartfelt reflection…

Actually I don’t think I can pull off the heartfelt bit, although my heart felt its share of stuff. I’d aim for profound and come up short and come off trite and worthy and sixth form and crap.

I learnt stuff. Anne Frank was four when the family emigrated from Germany as the Nazis rose to power, 11 when Germany invaded Holland, 13 when she went into hiding in an annex at the back of her father’s office building; 8 people crammed into rooms, tip-toeing through two years of fear and claustrophobia and hope and longing. She was 15 when she next set foot outside, marched out by Nazis and their Dutch collaborators. She was 15 when she died, losing to typhus in Bergen-Belsen days after her sister died, weeks before liberation.

The house on Prinsengracht is empty; the Nazis cleared it when they took the family. Anne’s father, the only survivor from the annex, had it kept that way. It’s a monument to emptiness and things taken, to the absence of six million people, of generations and futures and things lost. I touched the moving bookcase that hid the door to the annex, stood in Anne’s bedroom, looked at the pictures Anne had looked at, taken from magazines and pasted on her bedroom wall. It was crowded and silent. It was intimate and intrusive and massive, heavy with importance and loss and overwhelming sadness and the weight of humanity at the polar opposite of where it should be. Everyone should go and come out depressed and uplifted and ashamed to be part of the species.

They were taking donations to keep the place running. I donated. You can too, here.

Long-time followers of the site (me) will recall my environmental efforts in my last place of work, from complaining about our need for recycle bins to nagging about the absence of bins for recycling. It was a wide and varied campaign that addressed literally ones of issues. When take up was slow I brought out the big guns: the violent mood swings of Mr Albert Gore. He saw to it that people were educated about the folly of disposable cups, the madness of binning recyclable stuff, the moronitude of single-sided printing and the deeply erotic joys of his scribble pads. Following my lame-ass attempts to lead by example in my placement, the mighty Gore has returned to bring hope to the hopeless and annoyance to the easily annoyed.

Bish: I’m putting Happy Al next to the light switches in the toilets to encourage people to turn off the lights when they’re done. Its estimated this will make what experts are calling “a fraction of a tiny percent of a micro-difference” to global warming.

Bash: I’m putting Angry Al in the two kitchens, next to the bins that are forever full of plastic bottles, aluminium cans and dodo feathers.

Bosh: I’m putting frustrated Al on the printer. He can’t take any more of this single-sided printing shit.

And with that we begin again the barely amused reactions, the unconvincing, slightly embarrassed deniasl from me, and the absolutely no change to anyone’s environmental habits.

And so to 2012. As we embark on the final year of our civilisation’s time on the earth, with hopes of hoverboards and Skynets and robot mistresses fading, with Mayans falling from the sky and three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse dressed and ready, I have cause to reflect on all that we achieved together last year. If I recall correctly, I did some minor bits of very little and you didn’t bother reading about them.

We started our social work placements, righting wrongs on emergency duty shifts and de-offending young offenders. We took the Zero manifesto to the next generation, taking up residence in the uni magazine to bang on about vegetarianism, ethical tourism, volunteering and full on proper meddling. We took to the streets for the National Spring Clean, picking up litter, junk and a touch of Hepatitis. We reached out to artists and photographers to fill the site with images and steal nothing from no one. We campaigned for the AV referendum, succeeding brilliantly and transforming our electoral system forever if memory serves. We gave to a ton of Chazzas of the Month and reloaned our Kiva cash to entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone, Kenya and Rwanda. We completely failed to buy an environmentally friendly car, ran a couple of 10ks for chazza and bought vegetarian running shoes in the interests of thoroughness. We went to Nepal, gave to a hard up school, bigged up Fairtrade and fought the class war in Kathmandu. We signed a bunch of e-petitions that didn’t go anywhere because they weren’t sufficiently crass or racist. We freecycled til we couldn’t freecycle no more, we watched and told others to watch The Cove, and we did nothing while they killed Troy Davis. We bigged up the Nestlé boycott, joined a union to score a day off and converted the office to environmentalism in preparation for the return of Gore. And then we sort of ballsed it all up for a few weeks at the end there in a shameful display of inactivity as deadlines and late nights kicked us rather spectacularly in the arse.

But now we begin again, refreshed and ready, socks pulled up, new leaves purchased and turned over. And although our days are numbered, enough remain with which to do good. This will be the year we qualify as a social worker and get to meddle professionally, without essays jamming up our out of hours do-gooding time, with salary to do more good in the direction of charity. Opportunity awaits and resolutions are to be resolted. Or resoluted, depending on how far you’re willing to taunt the English language.

Last year we resolved to run a 10k for chazza (done), buy the world’s most ethical toothbrush (done) and launch Operation Parmesan (done, just barely, like Indy sliding under a door of rock and just about grabbing his hat). They were a mix of the clichéd, the tedious and the who gives a shit but they got done. This year I propose the following mix of the groundbreaking, the earth shattering and the game changing: First, I’ll be a better vegetarian, going after better sources of protein and vitamins and cooking halfway decent stuff instead of just heating up guff made by the ghost of Linda Macartney. Second, I’ll give more to charity, building up to about ten percent of my take-home once the worst of my student debts are covered and assuming Mrs Zero’s still around for me to sponge off. Third, I will actually succeed in buying the most environmentally friendly car my budget can manage when this current model dies as it inevitably will before the year is out. And fourth, I will look to switch my energy supplier to one that deals exclusively in wind, water, heart and various other Planeteers.

I will do these things. I will do all these things and more. And if I don’t, may God strike me dead where I stand. Or put shaving foam in my hand when I’m asleep on his couch and then tickle my nose.